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Signature Programs

Middle School is a world of variety and vitality, and our program immerses students in grades 6-8 in a stimulating and challenging intellectual environment. At GFS, every student can find a place to shine.

Signature Skills Program

Grade 6

Intentional and measurable instruction focusing on academic, organizational, and social emotional skills.

Goals

  • Learn how to be a student
  • Build a foundation for Middle School and beyond
  • Gain confidence in academic, organizational, and social-emotional skills

Service and Community Engagement 

Grade 7

A full-year exploration of service learning that includes students navigating curricula modules that focus on food insecurity, homelessness, and environmental stewardship.

Goals

  • Ignite the natural and necessary extension of our Quaker ethos
  • Harness the energy and curiosity of seventh graders
  • Capitalize on students’ desires to be active citizens capable of changing their world
  • Inculcate in our students the importance of mutual learning and abandoning the notion of service learning as operating from a deficit model

Capstone Project

Grade 8

Guided by a single question, students explore passion projects that allow them to position learning in ways which are authentic to themselves.

Goals
  • Offer a new element of student choice
  • Give students a positive and self-directed way to embrace learning through doing
  • Create a place where all students can share something that matters to them
  • Open students’ hearts and minds to myriad opportunities for curiosity and avenues to success

Middle School MINI-COURSES

Week-long interdisciplinary deep dives center joy, curiosity, and rigor as students experience uninterrupted learning around a single topic. Teachers partner to design mixed-grade courses and students chose from a menu of options.

Theatre Play or Musical

As part of a year-long Theatre Movement Arts program, the winter features a Middle School play or musical with participants across grades.